Ανταγωνιστική Διάχυση Και Τιμολόγηση Υπό Την Παρουσία Εξωγενών Επιδράσεων

Abstract

Nowadays, monopolies rarely show up as many companies compete for the crucial mass of most potential services. Moreover, the advent of the Internet and the rapid growth of social networking facilitates the spread ofinformation among the customers. Hence, when determining their selling strategy, companies should take into account these interactions to evade getting overtaken by their competitors.Such strategies might include offering the product to some customers for free so that they can influence their friends or even paying to attract their interest, either by bribing them or through advertisement. Another possible decision is selling the product at a low price at first and laterincreasing the price, as new customers are rather more eager to pay for it.In this thesis we survey the main directions in this area. We first elaborate on the diffusion of a product, should an initial influence set be targeted. Subsequently, we extend our viewpoint to the framework where competingproducts spread their influence. In addition to the existing approaches, our work in computing and characterizing equilibria on such a setting isconcisely described. Afterwards, we move to pricing models and the vital role that externalities among people play in the firms’ revenue maximization. We conclude this document with a brief review of the algorithmic work in the most fundamental competition pricing models.